Election AM in Florida: A Line, a Machine, a Conspiracy

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — I think it should be noted for the historical record that, at 6:58 this morning, just outside the Floranada Elementary School, we had our first official, audible "Go Fuck Yourself" of Election Day 2012. Out by the gate of the parking lot, a gentleman with a hearing aid was handing out official Democratic Party palm cards with the names of the Democratic candidates for state and local offices on them. (There was one line regarding the various referenda that have ballooned the Florida ballot up to seven pages: VOTE NO ON ALL, it said.) Anyway, a young man with a buzzcut, a College Republicans T-shirt, and an early-morning scowl that could have turned Cristal into pesticide came wandering through the gate. Undaunted by the obvious outward trappings of pure wingerosity, the man with the hearing aid reached out to the gentleman with the buzzcut. "Would you like a list of the Democratic candidates?" he asked.

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"Go fuck yourself," said the voter, who went glowering off to join the line.

And... we're off!

At 7 this morning, we had our first official voter. Marie Selzer, a 61-year-old retired research chemist, already had been waiting at the door for two hours. "I saw on TV the kind of horror show that there was for early voting and such," she said, and she was right about the horror, "so I thought I'd get here as early as I could." Selzer got to the school in the dark, and there already was another voter there, but he was sleeping in his car, so Marie scooped the first place in line. (She talked to me only after first ascertaining that I was not an exit-pollster. "I don't like those people," she said, and my first-hand observations down here us that her feelings represent a robust, bipartisan consensus.) She'd never been the first one before.

"I came early because I have to pick up a friend at the airport later this morning, and I wanted to make sure I got in there and voted," Selzer said. She remembers growing up in Manhattan, and the old voting machines where you flipped all the levers and then pulled down on a great big handle that looked like a slot machine. (If you wanted to vote straight-ticket, you flipped one switch at the top of the "Democratic" or "Republican" row and then gave the handle a yank.) She also remembers 2000 as the year it all went to hell here in Florida. "Our elections worked pretty well until then," said Selzer, who's lived here for two decades now. "Then that whole 'hanging-chad' election happened, and everything went wrong."

At about 8 this morning, we had our first conspiracy theory. A white lady who was on her way to line accosted Lynn and Candace Fowler, the two Obama campaign ballot-protection lawyers with whom I am rooming this week, to tell them her tale of woe. She got her brother a personal absentee ballot in Broward County, see, and he was waiting in line to cast it. (This "personal ballot" thing in Broward is an odd duck and I'm not entirely sure if it actually exists.) Then, "a busload of blacks drove up and got in line behind him, and they were allowed to vote right away while he had to wait in line. There was also this Hispanic guy, but he looked black, and the woman came up to him, right past my brother, who'd been waiting there in line longer, and she said to this guy, 'You've been waiting too long. Here, let me take your ballot for you.' This shouldn't fucking happen!" It's a world gone mad, I told her. She agreed and flounced off, leaving Lynn and Candace just a bit stunned.

Then, at about 8:45, we had our first voting-machine breakdown. They are using machines from ES&S Voting Systems, a company that is notable for both the erratic nature of its machines and the secretive nature of its operations. One broke down, and two guys showed up in a white rental van and subbed out the broken machine with a new one. Everybody in line — Republicans and Democrats — cast a gimlet eye on the two poor guys who were just there to do their jobs. And that was how Election Day started here.